Facebook is playing hide and seek

I noticed this today… Facebook has decided to lump stories from pages I like in to one on my news feed, where I have to actively scroll through to look at them, rather than have them appear on my news feed as normal.

Facebook has been at this for a while. Posts from pages you like are appearing less and less on your news feed unless the page pays to “Boost” the post… i.e. pays advertising fees.

For an independent musician like myself, and for many small/non profit pages this makes the job of communicating with our followers either difficult, or costly.

But hope is not lost…

When you hover on the “like” button on a page, there are some options for how that page appears to you. If you say “See first” it will appear without the post having to be “boosted” (i.e. paid to advertise).

I’ve also noticed that posts that get shared show up in the normal timeline far more often. At the time of posting, my page has 863 likes, of which around 420 are “friends” with my personal profile. I share most of my page posts to my personal account, and these are the only people that seem to see my posts. It’s very rare that a name I don’t recognise (i.e. one of the 440-ish other people that like my page) reacts to something I post. How to reach these people without “boosting” is something I’m trying to work out. If anyone has any suggestions please let me know!

In the meantime if you see a post from me where I’m trying to spread something (gig listings/new video etc), Please please please click to share it, it will make all the difference and it’s such an easy thing to do!

Of course the best way to keep up to date is still to get on my mailing list, and I’ll email you with all the really important stuff.